A Conversation for The Cranky Gardener

Baked apples - mmmm

Post 1

frenchbean

Hi Hypatia smiley - smiley

Great article as always smiley - biggrin

I love baked apples smiley - drool, especially with mincemeat (the sweet, Christmassy type) stuffed inside them. Then served with hot custard. smiley - tongueout

October is hectic in gardens this side of the Atlantic as well: heaps of cutting back, transplanting, pulling up, digging over etc.

How big is your plot? Your writing conjures up a veritable football field of a garden (more interesting than a football field obviously). Do you have defined areas of grass, flowers, fruit, veggies, or is it all mixed up together?

Keep up the good work...

smiley - cheers
F/b


Baked apples - mmmm

Post 2

Hypatia

I love mincemeat, but no one else in the family will even eat it. My dad liked it, so I used to share with him, but alas, he's gone now. Each Christmas I still make myself a pie, but I haven't made any home-made mincemeat for years and years. I buy the stuff in a jar at the supermarket.

And my husband, who normally eats anything, won't eat raisins. I think that's just weird. So I always have to make oatmeal cookies with and without in order to satisy both of us. Which has nothing to do with anything.

My yard/garden is really not large at all. It's just a city building lot. It's 120 feet wide and 220 feet deep. So it's about 0.6 acre. It's large enough to let me grow most of the things I want.

My vegetable plot is on one side by itself. It's long and narrow - 50' x 12'. But that is plenty of room for two people. Then I have a berry patch with blackberries that I am getting ready to enlarge this fall. I have table grapes growing on trellises. The fruit trees are scattered throughout the back garden which makes the area look lovely. But it makes it hard to mow since I have to dodge trees all the time. I have apples, sweet cherries, green gage plums, peaches, nectarines, pears and figs. The figs are planted near the house for winter protection. I have a strawberry patch but have decided to get rid of it and try alpine strawberries instead as a border for a large flower bed. I've never raised them, but they are supposed to be true perennials and don't put out runners, so they would stay neat. The berries are supposed to be small but very flavorful.

My cousin is going to help me build some raised beds for vegetables this fall, also, so I don't have a much trouble getting my early spring crops out. We'll use landscape timbers for the frames. I've had a drainage problem and in early spring the soil stays wet too long. So, the raised beds should simplify my life. smiley - smiley

I have almonds and pecans and my neighbor has a black walnut on the property line, so we get as many nuts as he does.

I have a large island bed filled with daylilies and spring bulbs and three other large flower beds in the back garden and one bed in the front. Next year I want to put in a long border in front where a hedge used to be. It would separate my yard from my neighbors. It would need to be about 90' long x 5' wide. The width bothers me since a decent border is usually twice that wide. But if I use fewer varieties of plants, I should be able to get away with it.

And I have four mature American elms with exposed roots. I want to plant bulbs and ground cover around them so I don't have to mow around them. I have more ideas than I have time and energy. smiley - erm

I know you grow vegetables. What else do you grow?

Hsmiley - book


Baked apples - mmmm

Post 3

frenchbean

smiley - wow It sounds lovely! Bigger than my garden, even though you're in the city. City plots in UK are hankerchief size - if you're lucky. I'm out in the countryside - great hill views.

I rent my property and my landlord is very keen on grass. When I arrived it was 99% grass - ugh. But on the plus side, there are mature hedges (hawthorn mostly) all around the garden, and 3 big apple trees and a Victoria plum tree.

It's about 0.3 acre, south-facing and borders 2 big gardens on either side and fields out another. Fortunately, I managed to sweet talk my landlord into letting me dig up some (quite a lot actually!smiley - winkeye) of the grass to create a veggie garden and a couple of shrub/flower borders. The veggie patch is 15m X 3m, which is plenty big enough for one person, and I plant it very densely (to keep down the weeds).

I follow the basic principles of permaculture gardening, so anything that I plant here must have more than one purpose. For instance, I really needed something to create a hedge between my garden and my neighbours' bedroom, so I planted lots of Jerusalem artichokes, which grow high and dense through the summer, which is when I sunbake in the garden and need my privacy!smiley - blush I've also added a damson tree, a mountain ash (for the rowan berries), lots of flowering shrubs (to attract pollinators and aphid predators).

I'm really bad on flowers and shrubs. So when I moved in here, I asked people who know about them to let me have cuttings etc. As a result I have a flowering border which is colourful nearly all year round, but I have no idea what most of the plants are called!

One of my friends keeps horses and she lets me have as much manure as I want. That's the trick to my garden - masses of magic muck! I heap it onto the beds in the spring and it really pays dividends. The veg crops are enormous and the flowers just bloom and bloom.

It's all organic, so the wildlife is wonderful. I have a dead plum tree branch 'planted' in the flower border in front of my sunroom, upon which I hang heaps of bird feeders. The birds just love it and I get all the usual 'little brown jobs' plus woodpeckers and hawks.

The grass around the fruit trees, I don't cut at all, so it's a haven for all sorts of beasties, like a stoat, voles (by the hundred I suspect!) and a mole. There are daffodil bulbs in there, which look a picture in the spring.

I have alpine strawberries, and they're spreading all over the place. Make sure you get un-spreading ones! One of the beds is the 'Spread-bed', where all those pesky uncontrollable plants grow - like the strawberries, comfrey, mint (the worst of all!). I hack them back hard 3 or 4 times a year. Of course, that encourages them, so it's the healthiest looking bed in the garden!

When I have my own place again (probably/hopefully in Australia) I plan to be much more self-sufficient than I am already. Growing a lot of different kinds of fruit really appeals to me.

If you can eat it, I'll grow it!

Imagine: not liking raisins?smiley - weird

smiley - cheers
F/b


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